Pam Barton Course maintenance-week

This week beginning Monday 27th February is set aside for Pam Barton Course greens renovations. 

The weather is mostly on our side although we would have preferred the sun to come through the lingering overcast conditions. 

We are about 2-4 degrees centigrade off the pace to encourage a swift recovery of the surfaces so we have taken a little of the temper out of our intended operations this week. 

Nevertheless, we have rocked on to the greens, collars, approaches and surrounds with our Charterhouse verti-drain, John Deere Aercore, sand-injection GRADEN scarifier, verti-cut units, dry DA30 sand and steel dragmatt. 

The verti-drain was configured with 1-inch diameter, 16-inch long solid tines.  The machine was set to penetrate to 14-inches and heave at 6-degrees.   

This operation will aid the drainage capabilities of the green by improving surface infiltration and internal percolation of moisture.  The gentle heave applied will promote fissures and cracks through the depth of the rootzone, relieve compaction and refuel the rootzone in-time for spring after the constant flow of winter golf traffic.

 


The John Deere Aercore 1500 is configured with 5/8-inch hollow-tines and sits behind the verti-drain operation.  This machines works in the top 4-inches of the surface managing the accumulation of any excess thatch.  

 



Routine hollow-coring will maintain the amount of thatch accumulation at appropriate levels.  This operation puts guarantees in the ground that our putting surfaces will continue to display the playing charcteristics so desired of the discerning members at Royal Mid-Surrey.

The sand-injection GRADEN scarifier runs over the green to sweeten-off the surface.  This linear aertion operation works in the top 2-inches of the greens surface and compliments the hollow-coring. 

The GRADEN is configured with 2mm wide blades.  We had intended to run our usual early spring routine with the GSO4 model using two 2mm blades butted together but this early week on offer in the Club diary for maintenance and the operations that went before conspired to destabilise the surfaces enough that we had to run our more measured late-summer GRADEN configuration. 




So now we are finished with the heavy plant operations and at the mid-point of the week.  From this afternoon we start brushing, maybe verti-cutting, topdressing and dragmatting. 

More to follow at the end of the week . . . . . . . . . .